All images: Joey Kirkman
Steven Tanger Center for the Performing Arts, Greensboro, NC
The Steven Tanger Center for the Performing Arts in Greensboro, North Carolina is now home to the largest Meyer Sound Constellation Acoustic System in the country. The 3,000-seat center’s events is now supported by world-class advanced technologies and variable acoustical environments tailored for each performance, its designers note.
Church venues around the country have benefitted from the Meyer Constellation system on a smaller scale for a number of years, from Laguna Presbyterian Church in California to Clinton Frame Mennonite Church in Goshen, Indiana to Northland, A Church Distributed in central Florida.
The recent ambitious Greensboro project, a $90-million facility with the latest technologies for acoustical and staging flexibility, allowed the venue to serve as both a concert hall for symphony performances and opera and an auditorium for a range of spoken word events and touring shows.
Design and specification
The challenge of getting sound and acoustics right for both kinds of uses--musical performance and spoken word--was handed to the acoustical consultants for the project, Arup of New York. Arup’s recommendation was to design the hall with relatively dry physical acoustics to accommodate spoken word and amplified music with electroacoustic enhancement added as required for most other musical events.
Also involved early in the process was Cliff Miller, president of SE Systems, selected as the AV systems integrator.
“To a great extent, the choice of Constellation was driven by a push from Dmitry Sitkovetsky, the music director of the symphony,” recalls Miller. “He visited Meyer Sound in Berkeley to hear Constellation early on when other systems were still under consideration. He also consulted with other conductors familiar with the technology before tilting strongly toward Constellation.”
Installation
The Constellation system as installed by SE Systems comprises a total of 205 small full-range loudspeakers mounted laterally and overhead. Eight different models were deployed, both full-range and subwoofers, all incorporating Meyer Sound’s exclusive IntelligentDC for self-powered systems with simplified cabling requirements. For ambient acoustical sensing, 57 miniature condenser microphones are arrayed throughout the hall, feeding signals to the 18-module D‑Mitri digital audio platform. Five of the modules are D-VRAS processors hosting the patented Virtual Room Acoustic System algorithm.
The Tanger Center schedule for 2021 and beyond will included the Greensboro Symphony subscription series, highlighting concerts with Kenny G and Sting. Also on tap is the inaugural Broadway season, as well as speakers that will include actress Sally Field and former U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May.
“The acoustical toolset we have in Constellation as applied in a 3,000-seat setting affords economic advantages that I believe will be a model for all future performing arts venues of this type, not just here in the United States, but around the world,” summarizes Matt Brown, managing director of the Tanger Center.
